Tech Weezwrites that it has taken Telegram roughly 2 years to double their daily users – an impressive surge for a social network. Every day, Telegram says, 1.5-million people sign up for its services. It is expected to reach 500-million users very soon.

To celebrate the milestone, the company has decided to bring forth a bevy of new announcements. Including a series of brand new features. First, the company says that it will focus on bringing secure group calls to the platform in 2020, a must-have for any messaging application during the #coronapocalype.

Tech Weez notes that video calls have long been a conspicuous omission from the network. Most of Telegram’s competitors, namely those like WhatsApp and Snapchat, have long had the feature.

Telegram Offers Cash for Education

Telegram is offering money to creators – a sum of $431 thousand. For creators to take part they need to use @Quizbot create and publish original educational tests on any subject at any difficulty level in any language.

With over 2-billion students worldwide resorting to remote learning due to ongoing COVID-19 crisis, this is Telegram’s way of making sure they log in on Telegram to learn something from the educational tests.

Telegram is also adding a new quiz mode on Telegram polls for users to create their own trivia questions. They also added a new sticker directory to browse and search the over 20,000 stickers on the app. There is also a new attachment menu on Android which makes it easier to use. They have also added some improvements for the macOS app where you can access shared media from the redesigned profile pages.